Palliative Care in People Living With HIV/AIDS: Integrating Into Standard of Care (FACE)

This study has been completed.

Sponsor:

Children's Research Institute

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:

NCT01775436

First Posted: January 25, 2013

Last Update Posted: August 31, 2017

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AIM 1. To determine the efficacy of FACE on congruence in treatment preferences between PLWA and their surrogates over time, and the effect of the pattern of congruence development trajectory on healthcare utilization (i.e., distal outcomes: number of hospitalizations, dialysis, ER visits).

Hypothesis A: Development of congruence may not be homogeneous and FACE may influence the pattern of congruence development.

Hypothesis B: Different patterns of congruence development may have different effects on health care utilization.

Measured by the Statement of Treatment Preferences. This measure was adapted using experts and community advisory board. It is a tool to express values and goals related to future medical decisions regarding frequently occurring situations specific to HIV/AIDS.Multiple Time Frames are needed as the Primary Outcome measure is going to report a change over time, per Aim 1: "to sustain congruence in treatment preferences between PLWA and their surrogate over time" compared to controls.

This scale is a valid and reliable measure of patient's current health, social and psychological status.We are conducting a longitudinal study and therefore looking at multiple time frames for change in palliative care over time.

Measures HIV specific Health Related Quality of Life; general health perceptions; pain; physical, role, cognitive and social functioning; mental health; energy/fatigue; health distress and quality of life. This is a longitudinal study requiring multiple time frames so we can report change in quality of life over time, related to HIV specific symptoms.

Patients or surrogates who present with severe depression or suicidality are excluded from this study. However, once enrolled levels of depressive symptoms will be monitored over the course of this longitudinal study.

Threat Appraisal Scale (TAS)is a questionnaire administered to the adolescent during baseline assessment only. This measure will retrospectively estimate the adolescent's threat appraisal of cancer when adolescent learned of cancer diagnosis. Test-retest reliability for this measure ranges from .68 in younger children to .93 in older children. TAS scores are found to demonstrate a high degree of agreement with children's open-ended descriptions of negative life events, indicating adequate convergent validity of this measure. Theoretically, threat appraisal is related to Lazarus' concept of primary appraisal, particularly to the way in which the event threatens the child's commitments, goals, or values. Higher threat appraisals should lead to negative arousal and coping and to increased psychological symptoms.

Session 1: Developmental History: Goal: To take a non-medical developmental history. The Research Assistant (RA)-Control will conduct the session in a structured interview format. Administered with all medical questions removed to prevent any risk of contamination with the experimental condition.

Session 2: Nutrition and Exercise: Assess nutritional status and provide advice for maintaining optimal nutrition to boost immune functioning. Administered by the RA Control and will be videotaped to control for what occurs in the FACE intervention.

Behavioral: FAmily-CEntered Advance Care Planning

Two-60 to 90 minute sessions scheduled one week apart.

Session 1: Respecting Choices Interview (R)to facilitate conversations and shared decision-making between the patient and surrogate about palliative care & prepare the surrogate to be able to fully represent the patient's wishes.

Session 2: Five Wishes (C). Patient selects which person the patient wants to make health care decisions for him/her; the kind of medical treatment the patient wants; how comfortable the patient wants to be; how the patient wants people to treat him/her; what patient wants loved ones to know; and any spiritual or religious concerns the patient may have.

Other Name: FACE

Behavioral: Healthy Living Control

Session 1: Developmental History: Goal: To take a non-medical developmental history. The RA-Control will conduct the session in a structured interview format. Administered with all medical questions removed to prevent any risk of contamination with the experimental condition.

Session 2: Nutrition and Exercise: Assess nutritional status and provide advice for maintaining optimal nutrition to boost immune functioning. Administered by the RA Control and will be videotaped to control for what occurs in the FACE intervention.

Other Name: HLC

Experimental: FAmily-CEntered Advance Care Planning

Two-60 to 90 minute sessions scheduled one week apart.

Session 1: Respecting Choices Interview (R)to facilitate conversations and shared decision-making between the patient and surrogate about palliative care & prepare the surrogate to be able to fully represent the patient's wishes.

Session 2: Five Wishes (C). Patient selects which person the patient wants to make health care decisions for him/her; the kind of medical treatment the patient wants; how comfortable the patient wants to be; how the patient wants people to treat him/her; what patient wants loved ones to know; and any spiritual or religious concerns the patient may have.

Behavioral: FAmily-CEntered Advance Care Planning

Two-60 to 90 minute sessions scheduled one week apart.

Session 1: Respecting Choices Interview (R)to facilitate conversations and shared decision-making between the patient and surrogate about palliative care & prepare the surrogate to be able to fully represent the patient's wishes.

Session 2: Five Wishes (C). Patient selects which person the patient wants to make health care decisions for him/her; the kind of medical treatment the patient wants; how comfortable the patient wants to be; how the patient wants people to treat him/her; what patient wants loved ones to know; and any spiritual or religious concerns the patient may have.

Other Name: FACE

Behavioral: Healthy Living Control

Session 1: Developmental History: Goal: To take a non-medical developmental history. The RA-Control will conduct the session in a structured interview format. Administered with all medical questions removed to prevent any risk of contamination with the experimental condition.

Session 2: Nutrition and Exercise: Assess nutritional status and provide advice for maintaining optimal nutrition to boost immune functioning. Administered by the RA Control and will be videotaped to control for what occurs in the FACE intervention.

Other Name: HLC

Detailed Description:

Our goal is to advance palliative care with persons living with AIDS (PLWA) or life-limiting co-morbidities aimed at relieving suffering and maximizing quality of life. One objective is to identify variables which influence decision-making with respect to advance care planning (ACP) for PLWA, as well as to determine the unique person-centered needs of subgroups of PLWA, as these are unknown. The negative consequences of no ACP or poor ACP include: unmet care or delivery of unnecessary or unwanted care, conflict erupting in the ICU, or the importance of non-relative caregivers being dismissed, for example gay partners. A second objective is to identify a "best approach" for standard of care in ACP, a key component of palliative care, as an end of life support. This approach may minimize health disparities in the likelihood of both identifying a surrogate decision-maker and using advance directives. We propose building on our evidence based, theoretical model, FAmily-CEntered (FACE) Advance Care Planning intervention, an HIV specific ACP program for Black teens which gained acceptance and demonstrated efficacy through increased congruence in treatment preferences and universal complete of advance directives with a surrogate decision-maker. Given the demonstrated needs and benefits of ACP and the low utilization among adult Black PLWA, we propose meeting this need by building on our FACE model with adults living with advanced AIDS and/or life-limiting co-morbidities in Washington, District of Columbia (DC) a city with endemic HIV and significant health disparities in death rates by race in an adequately-powered, randomized, clinical, 2-arm, single-blinded, controlled trial. We will test the efficacy of the FACE intervention for increasing congruence in end-of-life treatment preferences between PLWA and their surrogate decision-maker, to determine if increased congruence can be maintained over time. We will also determine if FACE is acceptable to primarily Black inner city adult PLWA. We will recruit from four hospital-based clinics and randomize 288 patient/surrogate dyads (N=576 subjects) in a 2:1 ratio to either FACE Intervention (N=192 dyads) or Control (N=96 dyads). Participants with HIV dementia, suicidality, homicidality or psychosis will be excluded. Two 60-minuted sessions will be conducted with a trained/certified facilitator at weekly intervals: FACE Session 1: The Respecting Choices Interview (R); Session 2: Completion of The Five Wishes (c). Control will also be administered in a dyadic format: Session 1: Developmental History; Session 2: Nutrition and Exercise. Standardized self-report measures will be administered at baseline, 3 month post-intervention 6 month post-intervention, 12 month post-intervention, and 18 month post-intervention. Thus, participants will be followed for an average of 2 years. This will be the first study to test an ACP model, integrating person-centered (GMM) and variable-centered analysis (GEE) to assess study outcomes.

Eligibility

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Ages Eligible for Study:

18 Years and older (Adult, Senior)

Sexes Eligible for Study:

All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers:

No

Criteria

Patient Inclusion Criteria:

HIV positive outpatients or inpatients with detectable viral load (>200 copies) twice in the past 1 year period OR CD4 count <200 OR with a co-morbidity that may significantly limit life expectancy, including malignancy, cirrhosis, cardiomyopathy, etc.

Patients with AIDS receiving dialysis, inpatients or outpatients

Patients not in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)

Age 21 years or older

All ethnic groups

Male or female

Knows his/her HIV status

English speaking

Absence of active psychosis or homicidal or suicidal ideation, determined at baseline screening by a trained research assistant as assessed by questions from a structured questionnaire

Absence of HIV dementia, determined at screening using the HIV Dementia Scale cut off score of <10

There is a plan to make de-identified individual participant data (IPD) collected in this study, which are not part of the specific aims, available for secondary analysis, to be shared with other researchers by submitting a request to the PI, Dr. Lyon.

Supporting Materials:

Study Protocol

Time Frame:

Data will become available on June 30, 2018 and for a period of two years.

Access Criteria:

Researchers or graduate students in need of a master's theses or dissertation project from academic settings, e.g. university or academic/research hospital will be allowed to have access to de-identified data.